Passport Probe Now a Felony Case : Campaign: Possible violations by White House personnel connected with the pre-election search of Clinton’s files could bring prison terms, sources say.

The independent counsel’s probe of White House officials’ role in the search of Bill Clinton’s passport file has broadened from a misdemeanor into a felony investigation, sources familiar with the inquiry said Friday.

When Atty. Gen. William P. Barr initiated a preliminary inquiry last month into alleged attempts to use government files for partisan political purposes, the focus was on possible violations of the Privacy Act, a misdemeanor statute that carries no prison sentence for violators.

But now, independent counsel Joseph E. diGenova is investigating whether White House officials attempted to cover up their knowledge of the search, possibly committing felony violations that carry prison terms, the sources said.

DiGenova was named Monday--one day before the law providing for such appointments expired--as independent counsel by a special three-judge federal panel.

Barr’s application seeking an outside prosecutor and the special court’s papers appointing DiGenova, former U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, are understood to name only a single White House official as a suspect, but to note “others” may be involved.

One source identified the individual as Janet G. Mullins, White House political director. Earlier investigations by the State Department’s inspector general and the General Accounting Office, Congress’ investigative arm, focused on Mullins, White House communications director Margaret D. Tutwiler and White House Chief of Staff James A. Baker III.

In asking for appointment of the independent counsel, Barr did not propose that the application be made public, a departure from the practice of earlier attorneys general in investigations that already had been widely publicized. But DiGenova is understood to have asked the court to make public the papers appointing him and setting out his mandate.

In addition, the chambers of U.S. District Judge David B. Sentelle, who heads the three-judge panel that picks independent counsels, were described as inundated with calls from news organizations seeking details on the appointment that was disclosed Thursday. The court papers could be made public Monday, a court source said.

At a briefing in Little Rock, Ark., George Stephanopoulos, President-elect Clinton’s communications director, praised the appointment of an outside prosecutor as a “good step” and the best way to “get to the bottom of it.”

Asked if Clinton was surprised by Barr’s decision to seek an independent counsel, given his opposition to the law, Stephanopoulos said: “I guess the only reasonable conclusion is that Barr felt he had to do it and that it would have been terribly embarrassing if he didn’t.”

The State Department launched a search of Clinton’s passport files at the behest of news organizations, which were exploring rumors that Clinton attempted to renounce his U.S. citizenship during the Vietnam War while he was a Rhodes scholar at Oxford University in England. No such evidence was ever found.

Responding to the news organizations’ requests was proper but the procedures used were not. Had the department’s Republican appointees followed regulations requiring them to respond to such requests in sequence, the search could not have taken place before the election. But by improperly speeding up the process and involving senior political appointees, the department had the opportunity to supply any damaging information--had it been found--well before the election.

Questions about the actions of Baker, Tutwiler and Mullins in the Clinton passport case first arose in an inquiry into the matter conducted by State Department Inspector General Sherman M. Funk in October and November. Funk questioned all three, and determined that Tutwiler and Mullins knew about the files search when it was under way, and that Baker learned of it within hours.

Funk said his finding appeared to conflict with Mullins’ assertions that she knew only what she had read in newspapers of the incident.